American Power

Sunday, June 11, 2023

Chris Begley, The Next Apocalypse

Chris Begley, The Next Apocalypse: The Art and Science of Survival.

Thursday, May 25, 2023

Michael John Witgen, Seeing Red

At Amazon, Michael John Witgen, Seeing Red:Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America.

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

GreenLife Soft Grip Diamond Healthy Ceramic Nonstick, 7" and 10" Frying Pan Skillet Set

At Amazon, GreenLife Soft Grip Diamond Healthy Ceramic Nonstick, 7" and 10" Frying Pan Skillet Set, PFAS-Free, Dishwasher Safe, Black.

BONUS: Marcus Collins, For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be.

Sophia

What an amazing woman!

On Instagram.

Sunday, May 21, 2023

'Shark Tank's' Kevin O'Leary, 'I have 54 companies in every state and nearly every sector, and we now know what the percentage is, it's just under 40 percent --- 40 percent are never coming back!' (VIDEO)

Office workers. Are the coming back in the new economy?

Elon Musk say employees working from home are like Marie Antoinette: Let them eat cake! (Like the folks who have to deliver your groceries every day and can't "work from home.")

Kevin O'Leary is great.

WATCH:

Martha Stewart Becomes Sports Illustrated's Oldest Swimsuit Cover Model

She's amazingly hot at 81!

At WSJ, "At 81, the domestic goddess fronts the magazine in glamorous swimwear that leaves little to the imagination. Her motivation? ‘Showing people that a woman my age can still look good and feel good’."

Be sure to tune into Squawk Box on CNBC this morning at 7:25am ET. I'll be talking about my Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover - pick up an issue of #SISwim23 tomorrow at newsstands. @ruvenafanador @mj_day @daisybeautytoye@djquintero @margotzamet @pniddy @sevaneveritt pic.twitter.com/jXEuFDANNC
— Martha Stewart (@MarthaStewart) May 17, 2023

Russia Retakes Bakhmut (VIDEO)

At the Wall Street Journal, "Bakhmut Is Largely Under Russian Control, Says Ukrainian General":

Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskiy says Ukrainian forces are still clinging to a tiny part of the city.
KOSTYANTYNIVKA, Ukraine—Ukrainian forces have lost effective control of the eastern city of Bakhmut, Ukraine’s top commander in the region said, as Moscow declared its first significant conquest since last summer after months of relentless fighting that has cost thousands of lives and obliterated the city.
Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskiy said Ukrainian forces clung to a tiny part of Bakhmut and were advancing around its flanks, but acknowledged that the city was largely under Russian control.
The city’s capture would mark the only significant success of a monthslong Russian offensive that has severely depleted its military.
The question of who really won the battle of Bakhmut, military strategists say, will be decided not by control over the shattered city but by the next phase of the war. Kyiv fought street by street and at great cost to grind down Russian forces and prepare its forces for its own offensive aimed at seizing back territory occupied by Russia. Fighting has also cut into Ukrainian forces after Kyiv committed additional units to its defense.
The fight for Bakhmut has highlighted how limited Moscow’s war aims have become. Russian media, which at the start of the war reported on its army’s lightning thrust toward Kyiv, has in recent days instead given daily updates on the fights for streets and even single buildings in a city once home to around 70,000 people.
That Ukraine was able to inflict very heavy losses on the Wagner group and Russian forces in Bakhmut for more than six months remains a success for the defenders, said Nico Lange, a former chief of staff to the German Defense Ministry and a fellow of the Munich Security Conference, a think tank.
“The complete takeover of Bakhmut does not make any strategic difference,” Lange, who visited the front lines as part of a study trip. “Ukraine will continue the defense in well-developed positions a little further west and at the same time may even get the Russians into trouble on the flanks.”
Ukrainian forces have been clinging to a shrinking patch on the western edge of Bakhmut for several weeks while launching counterattacks against Russian forces around the city.
On Saturday, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner paramilitary group that has been spearheading the offensive to take the city, said his forces had taken control of Bakhmut...

Saturday, May 20, 2023

Bwine GPS Drones and Gel Ball Blaster

Deal of the day, at Amazon, Bwine GPS Drones and Gel Ball Blaster.

BONUS: Norman Mailer, The Executioner's Song.

Friday, May 19, 2023

Civil War at CNN as "Journalist" Christina Amanapour Attacks CEO Chris Licht for Daring to 'Platform' the Front-Runner for the Republican Nomination for President -- My Conclusion: Licht is a Dead Man Walking

At AoSHQ, "But this is a news organization, right? CNN staffers have been in a "fury" since the Trump townhall. In fact, they were angry about it even before Trump exposed Kaitlin Collins as a callow, hollow leftwing sloganeer."

Jamaal Bowman Finds His Voice. Some Republicans Don't Like the Sound

Interesting.

At NYT, "The Democratic congressman has made a habit of brashly confronting Republicans like Marjorie Taylor Greene, often in public displays meant to attract attention":

Rep. Jamaal Bowman and Rep. Thomas Massie just got in something of a shouting match off the House floor over gun control pic.twitter.com/xvRAoxQQPL
— Emily Brooks (@emilybrooksnews) March 29, 2023

Many of his colleagues had already left for the night, but as Representative Jamaal Bowman, Democrat of New York, stepped out onto the Capitol steps on Wednesday, he had business left to do: heckling Republicans.
“Have some dignity!” he yelled toward Representative George Santos, the New York freshman who is fighting federal fraud charges, and to a sea of TV cameras waiting below.
“Listen, no more QAnon, no more MAGA, no more debt ceiling nonsense,” he said as he pivoted to another confrontation, this time with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who stood nearby. The theatrical back-and-forth ended as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a fellow member of the left-wing “Squad,” gave a slight tug to Mr. Bowman’s arm, repeating, “She ain’t worth it, bro” — but not before a handful of lawmakers whipped out cellphone cameras to capture the soon-to-be viral spat.
In this hyperpartisan era, the country has no shortage of politicians willing to savage each other from across a hearing room or on social media. But Mr. Bowman, a media-savvy democratic socialist from the Bronx, has rapidly made a name for himself this spring by going where most of them have not: up to his opponents’ actual faces.
Mr. Bowman’s platform includes far-reaching left-wing policies that split his party. Still, his style — “middle school principal energy,” he calls it — appears to have captured the id of even more moderate Democrats and has fueled party speculation about his ambition.
A video in which an AR-15-owning House Republican from Kentucky tells Mr. Bowman, 47, to “calm down” as they argue over how to stop gun violence has already been viewed more than seven million times. A friendlier confrontation, with a conservative House colleague, spawned a full CNN debate.
“I don’t mean any harm,” Mr. Bowman said in an interview. “I ain’t trying to hurt nobody. But we’ve got to take America to the next level, and we are not moving with urgency.”
The approach also carries risks, especially for a Black man, some of which came into sharp relief on Thursday. That is when Ms. Greene, a combative Georgian with a history of spouting conspiracy theories and directly confronting her own political opponents, said that she had felt threatened by Mr. Bowman, even though video showed her smiling as they sparred.
Ms. Greene said that Mr. Bowman had called her a white supremacist, an insult she claimed was “equal to” someone “calling a person of color the N-word.”

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She then said that the congressman’s “physical mannerisms are aggressive” and accused him of leading a “mob” targeting her when they both appeared outside a Manhattan courthouse where former President Donald J. Trump was being arraigned — an apparent reference to a crowd that consisted largely of members of the news media.
“I’m very concerned about Jamaal Bowman,” Ms. Greene said, “and he’s someone that people should watch.”

Target Earnings Squeezed as Shoppers Stick to Basics

Target's getting hammered. Their grocery business takes just 3 percent of the share of total grocery sales in the U.S. And folks aren't shopping for the quasi-fashionable Target brand --- Tar-Jay.

Maybe Target's the next Bed Bath & Beyond?

At WSJ, "Consumers cut back on nonessential items as sales come in flat; rise in theft cuts into profit."

Monday, May 15, 2023

Sad-Posting on Tik-Tok

It's all bad for you, all of social media.

These platforms seem to be getting worse, though. Either that, or more scrutiny is revealing how lethal they are.

At WSJ, "Self-harm, sad-posting and disordered-eating videos abound on the popular app":

Calls to ban TikTok in the U.S. are growing louder. Government leaders are trying to keep the popular China-owned social video platform away from schools, public workers, even entire states, on the grounds that users’ data could wind up in the wrong hands.
Data privacy, though, might be less worrisome than the power of TikTok’s algorithm. Especially if you’re a parent.
A recent study found that when researchers created accounts belonging to fictitious 13-year-olds, they were quickly inundated with videos about eating disorders, body image, self-harm and suicide.
If that sounds familiar, a Wall Street Journal investigation in 2021 found that TikTok steers viewers to dangerous content. TikTok has since strengthened parental controls and promised a more even-keeled algorithm, but the new study suggests the app experience for young teens has changed little.
What teens see on social media can negatively affect them psychologically. Plenty of research backs this up. The simplest evidence may be found in my earlier column about teens who developed physical tics after watching repeated TikTok videos of people exhibiting Tourette Syndrome-like behavior.
A TikTok spokeswoman said the company has a team of more than 40,000 people moderating content. In the last three months of 2022, TikTok said it removed about 85 million posts deemed in violation of its community guidelines, of which 2.8% were suicide, self-harm and eating-disorder content. It also considers the removal of content flagged by users. “We are open to feedback and scrutiny, and we seek to engage constructively with partners,” the spokeswoman added.
Two-thirds of U.S. teens use TikTok, and 16% of all U.S. teens say they’re on it near constantly, according to Pew Research Center. Kids’ frequent social-media use—along with the potential for algorithms to lure teens down dangerous rabbit holes—is a factor in the American Psychological Association’s new recommendations for adolescent social-media use.
The group this week said parents should monitor their younger kids’ social-media scrolling and keep watch for troublesome use. The APA also urges parents and tech companies to be extra vigilant about content that encourages kids to do themselves harm.
‘Every 39 seconds’ The Center for Countering Digital Hate, a nonprofit that works to stop the spread of online hate and disinformation, tested what teens see on TikTok. Last August, researchers set up eight TikTok accounts to look like they belonged to 13-year-olds in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia. For 30 minutes, researchers behind the accounts paused briefly on any videos the platform’s For You page showed them about body image and mental health, and tapped the heart to like them.
TikTok almost immediately recommended videos about suicide and eating disorders, the researchers said. Videos about body image and mental health popped up on the accounts’ For You pages every 39 seconds, they added.
After the researchers published their findings, many of the videos they flagged disappeared from TikTok. Many of the accounts that posted the material remain. Those accounts include other videos that promote restrictive diets and discuss self-harm and suicide.
TikTok does take down content that clearly violates its guidelines by, for instance, referring directly to suicide. Videos where people describe their own suicidal feelings, however, might not be considered a violation—and wouldn’t fall under moderator scrutiny. They could even be helpful to some people. Yet child psychologists say these too can have a harmful effect.
TikTok executives have said the platform can be a place for sharing feelings about tough experiences, and cite experts who support the idea that actively coping with difficult emotions can be helpful for viewers and posters alike. They said TikTok aims to remove videos that promote or glorify self-harm while allowing educational or recovery content.
The company said it continually adjusts its algorithm to avoid repeatedly recommending a narrow range of content to viewers.
‘Sad and lonely’
The Center for Countering Digital Hate shared its full research with me, including links to 595 videos that TikTok recommended to the fake teen accounts. It also provided reels containing all of the videos, some of which are no longer on the site. I also looked at other content on the accounts with flagged videos.
After a few hours, I had to stop. If the rapid string of sad videos made me feel bad, how would a 14-year-old feel after watching this kind of content day after day?
One account is dedicated to “sad and lonely” music. Another features a teenage girl crying in every video, with statements about suicide. One is full of videos filmed in a hospital room. Each of the hospital videos contains text expressing suicidal thoughts, including, “For my final trick I shall turn into a disappointment.”
Users have developed creative ways to skirt TikTok’s content filters. For instance, since TikTok won’t allow content referencing suicide, people use a sound-alike such as “sewerslide,” or just write “attempt” and leave the rest to the viewer’s imagination. Creators of videos about disordered eating have also evaded TikTok’s filters...